Sauced: Extra-Smooth Hummus

Get the Recipe

While hummus takes mere minutes to put together at home, I still buy it at the grocer's more often than not. Until recently, I just couldn't quite match the silky smoothness of the store-bought stuff. After posting my first hummus recipe, Serious Eaters told me the answer to this problem could lay in the chickpea skins—remove those and I'd be led on a direct path to the extra-smooth hummus I craved.

I figured if I was going to go for it, I might as well go all the way. I started off this recipe with dried chickpeas that were soaked overnight, then cooked until soft throughout. After that came the painstaking, mind-numbing task of peeling each chickpea, an effort that kept me busy for well over half an hour. Finally, the hummus came together in a food processor, with very little variation from my standard recipe.

What emerged was indeed exactly what I was looking for—a hummus with a great, consistent flavor delivered in a lusciously smooth fashion. Of course, this came with the price of excessive labor, which will probably keep me buying off the shelf. Still, it was great to have a large batch of naked hummus at home that I could split into many variations—my favorite being harissa and mint—and garnered praise from guests, whose inquires as to how I got it quite so smooth left me feeling totally fulfilled.